To celebrate its 85th year in business, Woodland Jewellers’ Geoff Bourdon, a fourth-generation family member, has designed and handmade a beautiful, one-of a-kind pendant, featuring genuine sapphires and diamonds set in platinum.
Geoff took 40 hours to make the pendant and many more hours to finalize the design as that process can be quite complicated, taking time to marry up the vision of what you want to create to the technical requirements to do so.
“Our rare and precious gem dealer sent us a rainbow of fancy coloured sapphires for me to choose from. Laying them out on my bench and moving them around helps with the creative process. The design sort of comes to you, sometimes in a short time and sometimes it takes longer than I would like,” Geoff said.
The five sapphires range in colour from blue and green to purple to represent the 85th year in business. The sapphires are all different shapes: round, oval, teardrop, trillion and soft emerald cuts. Each sapphire sits in a bezel setting surrounded by sparkling diamonds.
READ MORE: Woodland Jewellers continue to provide quality work after 85 years
There are also diamonds on the bale of the pendant that represent the sand in an hourglass falling around the sapphires. Just like the amount of time that has gone by since Tony Woodland opened his small watch bench in the corner of Mackenzie’s General Store 85 years ago.
Just as our city has grown up from a small municipality so has the business grown and improved over the years. Ralph and June took the business from its small location at 85 Oliver Street in 1973 and built the building the store is still situated in, expanding the jewellery store.
Now their daughters Cindy Watt and Brenda Bourdon are continuing the tradition of a family-run business.
“Our family has always felt that the hospital in any community is very important to all of its citizens, so to thank our community for supporting us over the years, we thought raising money and donating the proceeds to the hospital was a very fitting anniversary celebration,” Cindy said.
Since 2009, seven beautiful handmade rings and two gorgeous pendants have been donated and raffled off. The collaboration between Woodland Jewellers and the people of Williams Lake has raised $94,500. All this money has stayed in the community and benefitted it by helping to purchase a digital mammography machine, CT scanner, echo cardiogram and a hematology analyzer. This is the 10th year Woodland Jewellers has been raffling off handmade one-of-a- kind pieces of jewellery and they hope to add another $10,000 to that total.
READ MORE: Woodland Jewellers pendant dazzles
This Nov. 24 the Cariboo Foundation Hospital Trust gala will be held at the Sacred Heart Hall. The draw for the pendant, valued at $9,950, will be held at 9 p.m.
There are still tickets available to purchase so go to Woodland Jewellers and get yours now so you aren’t disappointed. $20 gives you a one-in-500 chance to win the beautiful sapphire and diamond pendant and also gives more money to our local hospital. Previous winners have been heard to say: “I never win anything!”
Maybe this year, that lucky person who gets called with the great news will be you.
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